Your Local Dairy
The Floods
November 2021
In November of 2021 torrential rains flooded rivers and farmland throughout southern British Columbia, resulting in mudslides and washouts that obstructed over a 130-kilometre stretch between Hope and Merritt. It resulted in a loss of connection between the Lower Mainland to the rest of the country and set rainfall records throughout B.C.
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Roughly 20,000 people were forced to abandon their homes and thousands of animals died.
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Many volunteers came together at this time to support their communities as individuals navigated through this difficult time.
Blackwell Dairy
Supporting The Community
2021 Floods
Due to the road blockages dairy producers across southern B.C. had difficulty delivering their products to stores; leaving them with very little to no inventory.
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At this time Blackwell Dairy Farm was the only producer supplying the interior with dairy products. Trying our best to feed the communities well times were tough for many.
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For day to day operations, Blackwell increased their production by processing neighboring farms. Today the increase is still met by our neighbors that meet the high quality product standards as we do with our herd.
How Did it Affect Our Processing
Immediately our production increased. We had neighbors volunteering to help answer the phones in the office and neighboring farmers helping us with staff shortages.
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Our regular production days include 3 days a week at 20,000L at this time our productions days jumped to 5 days a week at 100,000L.
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Crate colour mix: Due to the low supply of crates we had to source crates from all over. A mix match of colours and styles along with our traditional Blackwell Dairy crates were used to ensure orders were being filled.